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If It’s Friday, It’s Time For A USC Notes Column

Now that we are a couple weeks removed from the end of spring practice, the hype has settled down.

But spin lasts forever.

“After winning a Rose Bowl and winning the Pac-12 title and you lose the last four losses by seven points or less,” Clay Helton said this week.

Why do we need to be reminded of all this?

USC won a Rose Bowl (that it went to without winning the Pac-12 South) and won a Pac-12 title the following year, thanks to Sam Darnold. We all know you blew the losses.

  • You let the players talk you out of a field goal and failed to convert a key fourth-and-1 vs. Arizona State.
  • You ran a horrible pass defense on a key TD pass vs. Cal and let Iman Marshall commit a dumb penalty at the end of the game.
  • You lost to a 2-8 UCLA team at the Rose Bowl as your star defensive coordinator let Joshua Kelly rush for 289 yards.
  • You only lost to Notre Dame 24-17 because JT Daniels threw his “dumb smile” touchdown pass with 48 seconds left that made the score look better.

We don’t need to be reminded. We know. We lived the losses. Just fix the mistakes and don’t make excuses.

Meanwhile . . .

  • Lynn Swann sure took a prominent role at the USC-UCLA dual track meet Sunday, making sure he was front-and-center and pictured. Could he be feeling some heat now that a new president is in town?
  • Felicia Washington was hired this week by USC as senior vice president of human resources. This is a new position for USC and tells you why so many of these scandals existed. Without a single HR executive, too many departments and divisions could do things differently.

Washington, like new president Carol Folt, comes from the University of North Carolina. Also this week, USC hired David Wright as senior vice president for administration and Glenn Osaki as senior vice president and chief communications officer. Changes are being made at least. Now when will the athletic dept. start changing?

  • Former USC cornerback Nickell Robey, who plays for the Rams, will graduate from USC next Friday.
  • Among the celebrities who will speak at the different on-campus commencement ceremonies are Jimmy Kimmel, Kristen Bell and Mikhail Baryshnikov.

Bell will speak at the School of Dramatic Arts commencement, Kimmel will be the School of Medicine speaker and Baryshnikov will speak at the School of Dance’s first-ever ceremony.

  • Here is a picture above from the 1959 Los Angeles Classic Tournament at the Sports Arena. Tempers flared between USC and UCLA and referees intervened. A crowd of more than 13,000 watched a USC-UCLA/West Virginia Cal doubleheader. It makes me nostalgic for the Sports Arena.

USC and UCLA played each other five times that season including the final weekend of the season, when the games were Friday/Saturday night. UCLA won three of the games by a total of five points.

  • USC baseball hosts No. 2-ranked Stanford for three games starting Friday night at Dedeaux Field. Can pitcher Connor Lunn work his magic again? Lunn has pitched in USC victories over UCLA, Arizona State, Utah, Washington State and Cal Poly San Luis Obispo in the past five weeks in the opening game of each three-game series. Lunn is 6-1 overall with a 2.23 ERA and allowed only 37 hits in 60.2 innings.

Too bad his talents are being squandered on a Dan Hubbs-coached team.

 

35 thoughts on “If It’s Friday, It’s Time For A USC Notes Column”

      1. Hmmm? Interestingly you and T/bow were seen late last night a Walmart buying corn oil and plastic sheets. But then as we say “ not that there’s anything wrong with it”, I’m not one to judge. It’s always curious to me when someone constantly refers to this type of humor or put down, “why are they so insecure?”.

        💋

        Liked by 2 people

      2. Pudly —- My guess is there’s probably not one single gay USC guy contributing to this blog —- but all the UCLA guys use this as their ‘go to’ rebuttal line……
        #…DoTheySupposeTheWordGayIsASlur?

        Liked by 2 people

      1. How long do you and T/bow spend pickin pubic hair out of each other’s teeth like a pair of little monkeys…???

        💋

        Like

    3. Hi Helen. good to hear your tsk task words of wisdom always spoken with the authority of a Catholic school marm that you are. Bravo.

      Liked by 1 person

      Reply

  3. A lot there Scottie but for all of us I’d say the most eye-catching was:

    “Lynn Swann sure took a prominent role at the USC-UCLA dual track meet Sunday, making sure he was front-and-center and pictured. Could he be feeling some heat now that a new president is in town?”

    He has to go along with Helton or this mess will never ever end.

    Liked by 4 people

    Reply

      1. Pud the girl wanted to go to Columbia but Singer muscled her into Stanford that’s where he had greased the skids – I’m guessing $500k…Mr Singer aka ‘Ricky’ kept the rest a kool $6 million for himself.

        Funny how the LA Times is on this daily witch hunt but not any mention of the systemic corruption of ble-air tech’s athletic dept. specific to identical; charges – admitting student as ‘faux’ athletes and then having them vanish in that sweet tax supported con job. The 2nd in command of bel-air tech athletes is how high the investigation has found the corruption but what matters to the Times is the same regurgitated story about USC. Today in their (LA Times) article specific re. this Chinese girl getting admitted to Stanford the Times somehow slid USC in anyways.

        It is relevant the degree of corruption Heinel created once Singer fingered her for the one who was just as greedy as he was….note the NY Times article that states …

        follow-on post

        Liked by 1 person

      2. Fron MY Times

        “Businesses like these have boomed in China as the number of Chinese international students has steadily grown in the United States. In 2017, there were more than 363,000 Chinese students enrolled in American universities, more than a third of all international students, according to the Institute of International Education.

        Jack Chen, a marketing executive for the Institute of Chinese Language and Culture, which offers college consulting and tutoring, said companies like his help students get reference letters, write essays and prepare for interviews. They also advise children on how to build up their résumés to include charity work and competitions that separate them from their peers, he said.

        Mr. Chen said he knew of consulting companies that could find back doors into top universities in the United States, but he declined to disclose their names. He added that there used to be more of these services, but that American universities had cracked down after several cases of cheating by Chinese students on standardized exams and college applications.”

        Why no outcry about bel-air tech’s systemic corruption?

        Liked by 1 person

  6. My question is, how efficient was the athletic department at the University of North Carolina? Because that should be an indication of how things will be at USC , and Lynn Swann’s future

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

    1. Not very, they had a scandal involving athletes getting A’s in a class that they didn’t even attend

      Like

      Reply

      1. You’re stupid as they come. What was the timeline of her hiring vs the incident you refer to? You – Really -Stupid.

        Liked by 1 person

  7. The most damning comments from the story Scottie cites is from Matt Leinart:

    “There’s a lot of pressure on Clay Helton. I think he’s doing the best he can. We’ll see what happens. I support him.”

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

    1. The phrase “doing the best he can” is not one you want to see in your performance evaluation. Once —-as a joke which I immediately corrected— I gave a great law student a fake grade paper for my Evidence class which had a 69 scratched out, followed by a 70 scratched out, followed by a 69 scratched out followed by a 70 with the words “I know you’re doing the best you can.” He immediately knew it was a joke.
      #”BestYouCan”IsAJoke

      Liked by 2 people

      Reply

      1. MG, yes, “doing the best you can” means “you will be honorably terminated because you put forth effort”.

        #SwannWillBeADishonorableDischarge

        Liked by 1 person

      2. 67 —can you even imagine any commentator saying that Saban or Swinney is doing “the best they can”??
        #ItSoundsLikeOneOfPudly’sBackhandedCompliments…
        #…OnlyMoreDamning

        Liked by 1 person

  8. SCooter,

    Did you finally grow a pair and almost became a man? Wow, what a blast with your first paragraph.

    Who is Kristen Bell? I have never heard of her. Should I?

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

    1. So I read up on Kristen Bell, nothing but another Libertard. She joins the ranks of Kimmel. What is wrong with SC? SC keeps pounding these pencil neck geek libertards into life at SC. Why can’t they get Hannety or Limbaugh out there. Now, if that were the case, I would go and just listen to the key note speaker.

      Bell will say, save the environment, save the whales, don’t trust the present president, ride bikes and get out of cars, don’t fly, remove cows, believe in Socalism, and don’t believe in God but mankind. Did I forget anything.

      Liked by 4 people

      Reply

      1. pt —nice piece but, in my humble opinion, you need to spend a bit less time on Bell and a bit more time on Kimmel as speaker FOR THE SCHOOL OF MEDICINE. USC is demonstrating some seriously bad judgement —-getting on a political bandwagon just before it crumbles in the most dramatic way.
        #HowFarBehindTheCurveCanYouGet?

        Liked by 1 person

  9. Michael,

    I did not even address Kimmel. What the heck is wrong with SC? This socialist will either rag or support SC. How can he be a symbol of what the students can look up to or admire to be? He has a simpleton frame of mind and that is to place bad light on the President. Same with Fallon and the Colbert. Carson stayed away from Politics. Why can’t these yahoos do the same? Once again the pencil neck geek will scream out to resist conservatism, challenge everything that is Conservative, hate Trump, hate Barr, and vote for one of the 20 losers that are running for the Socialist Party aka Democrat party. I can’t rage on him in terms of faith because he supposedly is a practicing Catholic, which is my faith. That is also Fallon’s and Colbert’s. God, help us.

    Liked by 2 people

    Reply

    1. I hate to think of USC as so out of touch that it’s humping the DNC during the later stages of its rigor mortis. Whatever impressive goals the dems once pursued, they’ve plainly lost their way. Over the course of this summer it’s going to become pretty clear to fair minded folks that they played fast and loose with the rules to the point they began committing objectively illegal acts on a routine basis. For a university to court symbols of this party at this juncture is just so clueless. USC is so desperately & embarrassingly behind the political curve.

      Liked by 1 person

      Reply
  10. Pingback: If It’s Friday, It’s Time For A USC Notes Column – InsideUSC with Scott Wolf

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